


Let Me Take Care of You

by msred



Series: Starting Over [30]
Category: American (US) Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Arguing, F/M, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Happy Ending, Illnesses, Marriage, Reunions, Sick Character, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29057661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: Chris had been home for only 20 minutes after being gone for almost two months when things started to go downhill.
Relationships: Chris Evans (Actor) & Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor) & Reader, Chris Evans (Actor) & You, Chris Evans (Actor)/Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor)/Reader, Chris Evans (Actor)/You
Series: Starting Over [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1423663
Comments: 18
Kudos: 44





	Let Me Take Care of You

**Author's Note:**

> Reminder: This series exists in a world where Covid is not a thing, since this world was created back in Summer 2019. I know it may be just natural instinct to think along those lines when you start reading this one, but it's not that at all.

_ 37 months together, 20 months married (February, Year 5) _

Chris had been home for only 20 minutes after being gone for almost two months when things started to go downhill.

He’d left to go to New Orleans for work right after the first of the year, the second half of shooting on a film they’d done the first portion of in New York before the holidays, and was finally home. And I’d been  _ so  _ looking forward to his return. I always did, of course, any time he had to leave for work, but that particular time was a little different. I’d been incredibly sick for a few days by that point, running a constant fever, unable to get through a sentence without coughing, and I hadn’t taken a full, deep breath in several days. I’d even thrown up a handful of times, which I almost never did. It wasn’t even that I wanted him to come home to take care of me (though I didn’t hate the idea of being able to ask him to heat up food for me, just so I wasn’t up and down so often), it was that I craved the comfort of having him around. It was also the first time I’d been sick since we’d gotten married (honestly, it was the first time I’d been  _ really  _ sick, more than a light cold or sinus problems, since we’d been together at all; I’ve never really been one to get sick) and for whatever reason, it made me miss him more - even more, it seemed, than I had when we were still dating and living a thousand miles apart.

And then he’d called before heading to the airport that morning. My first thought, when I heard the tone of his voice, was that his flight was being delayed, or, worse yet, that  _ he _ was being delayed, held back for some reason. But no, he was going to be home exactly on schedule. He was just sick. As sick as I was, from the sound of it. He was hoarse, his voice sounding like he’d been out all night drinking and smoking (and I knew that wasn’t the case, because even if I didn’t just  _ know  _ that he’d all but outgrown that sort of thing by that point and had very nearly quit smoking altogether, we’d been on Skype together, both of us in bed and in our night clothes, until he was falling asleep on the call), he was coughing nearly as frequently as I had been, and he spoke like his brain just wasn’t quite up to speed, like he’d either taken medication that was slowing him down or he had a fever that was affecting his thinking. 

Suddenly it didn’t matter anymore that I was sick, not to me, anyway. And it wouldn’t matter to him, because, well, he didn’t actually know. I’d been doing my best to hide it from him because I didn’t want to stress him out or make him feel bad while he was away for work and couldn’t have done anything about it anyway. I stayed on the phone with him until he boarded his flight, then set about getting ready for him to get home, suddenly a much more involved process than I had originally planned for it to be. The house was mostly clean, since I’d more or less lived only in the kitchen and master suite for the previous several days and had been trying really hard to clean and sanitize after myself as I went, but we were all but out of groceries. So I’d showered, gone to the grocery store in sweats and a hoodie with my hair in a messy bun for good, fresh food to make homemade soup, then come back home and put myself together properly. 

It had been a long time since I’d really done myself up for Chris’s homecomings, anything more than my daily five minutes’ worth of makeup and simple styling of my straight hair. For one thing, it was often the middle of the night when he got home, particularly if he was coming from the West Coast. For another, by the time we were married, we’d done the whole ‘long-distance reunion’ thing many times, and while I always made it a point to be clean and presentable and not a mess when he got home, I didn’t feel a need to put on a show for him, either. Honestly, I never really had. He’d never once commented on how much make-up I chose to wear, whether it was my daily almost nothing or the slightly increased amount I did for more special occasions and events, except to throw out compliments now and then to let me know that he noticed when I did something new, but he’d always made it very, very clear that he didn’t want me doing any more for him than I would have done otherwise. (And considering I’d been wearing no makeup and my hair was in a sloppy bun held up by a pencil the first time we’d met, and that most of the next several times had been right after I finished a full day of work, and he managed to develop feelings for me anyway, I kind of had to believe him.) That day, though, it took more work than usual to cover the dark circles under my eyes and the hollows in my cheeks. I still couldn’t bring myself to bother with my contacts, though, knowing they would only exacerbate my headache.

By the time Chris got home, I’d done everything possible to cover and hide how sick I’d been, how sick I still was, and, mentally at least, I was ready to set aside how I felt and take care of him; I just hoped my body would comply. I met him at the door so that I could usher him straight to the couch, which I’d piled high with every spare pillow and blanket in the house, then take his luggage and immediately dump everything into the washing machine. By the time I finished with that, he’d made himself at home on the couch.

I stood behind him and ran my fingers through his hair, curling one hand around the back of his neck and flattening the other on his forehead when I finished. Even with my own fever I could tell he was warm. I rested my hands on his shoulders and bent to kiss his hair. “I’m gonna go make you something to eat, okay?” I murmured into his hair. 

He nodded. “Thank you baby. I’m sorry I’m a mess, this isn’t how I wanted to come home to you.”

“Stop,” I combed my fingers through his hair a few more times, knowing he’d come to love it as much as I did. “Not your fault.” I was using as few words as possible, knowing that the more I talked the more likely I was to have my own coughing fit, and I hoped he wouldn’t notice and call me out on it. He didn’t seem to catch on, though, because he only nodded.

“I’m gonna call Ma while you’re cooking. Will it bother you if I put her on speaker phone, don’t really wanna hold the phone up to my face and breathe on it and shit.”

“Of course not,” I kissed his head again. “I won’t be far if you need me.”

As I made my way across the open space, through the dining room and into the kitchen, I could hear the dial tone as he put the phone on speaker and called his mom.

“Hey hon, you home?” My mother-in-law’s voice rang through the house.

“Yeah,” he nearly croaked, “got in about 20 minutes ago.”

“Oooh, you don't sound good.”

Chris just scoffed, which then made him cough. “Nah, I feel like shit.”

I’d done a lot of the prep work for the soup earlier in the day, chopping all the vegetables and pre-cooking and shredding the chicken, so I set the broth to boil and started pulling things out of the fridge. Normally if I was making soup, I’d make it a point to make it as hearty as possible, with so much meat and vegetables that the broth was almost more for show than anything. That day I was doing the opposite. I wanted to make sure that each bite he got was mostly liquid, because I knew that’s what he needed more than anything. It was easy to follow along with their conversation, since all I was doing was letting the pot simmer and slowly adding the prepared ingredients.

“Uh oh,” I heard Lisa say. “Did you get your flu shot this year?”

“Yeah,” we’d gone together back in the fall, knowing that me being back at work in a school meant we were both at risk. “I think it's just travel crud. I'm hopin' a couple days resting here at home will knock it out.” He did always work himself too hard, especially when he was on location and I wasn’t around to be a reason for him to come home at a decent hour or to almost force him to rest and eat properly.

“I hope so too, for both of your sakes.” I froze, nearly holding my breath, hoping Chris wouldn’t ask what she meant by that and that she wouldn’t elaborate. “And how is my favorite daughter-in-law doing?” I let my eyes fall closed and exhaled slowly, careful to monitor my breath and not incite a coughing fit.

“God, she's a champ,” Chris sighed and I felt myself blushing from more than the fever as I pushed carrots into the soup pot. “She took my stuff from me the second I walked in the door and started a load of laundry, she practically made me a blanket fort on the couch, and now she's in the kitchen makin' soup. I wish I could tell you it smells awesome, but I can't smell anything.” He tried to chuckle and started coughing again, breaking my heart a little. I thought I probably knew exactly how he was feeling, and it was definitely highly unpleasant. “I don't know how I survived even a sore throat without one of the two of you taking care of me.”

“You didn't,” I could hear the teasing in her voice, “you always just came back home.”

He groaned and I turned to look out of the corner of my eye as he threw a hand up and over his heart. “Ouch, way to kick me when I'm down, Ma.” I couldn’t help but grin at the fact that even feeling like he was, talking to his mother inevitably meant snark and teasing. 

“I'm just speaking the truth.”

“Yeah, well, the truth hurts your poor, sickly son.”

I was still smirking at their banter when Lisa said, “Well, maybe your wife can pass along some of her incredible immunity and healing powers. I can't believe how quickly she recovered.” I let go of the wooden spoon I was using to stir the soup, letting it clatter into the pot, and pressed the heels of my hands to the edge of the counter on either side of the stove, my chin dropping to my chest and my eyes falling closed.

“Recovered?” I hadn’t looked up but I could tell just from the sound and projection of his voice that he’d turned to look at me over the back of the couch.

I picked up on the change in his tone, but Lisa didn’t seem to. “I just can't believe, as bad a state as she was in just a couple days ago, that she's already doing so much better.” I heard the shuffling sounds of Chris throwing off the blankets I’d helped him burrow into and getting up off the couch. “I really do think she was just pushing herself too hard, always working, insisting on volunteering at the shelter and with me at the theatre, running around after the dogs.” She sighed. “It was just a matter of time before her body shut down on her. Maybe now that you're home you can get her to slow down a little.”

“Yeah, she does have a tendency to push herself.” Chris was crossing the living space, coming toward me, I could tell. I refused to turn around, stirring the soup in front of me with no conviction, half the veggies and the bowl of shredded chicken still on the counter, now ignored.

“She tried to insist that she was fine to come help organize prop storage, since there weren't any kids there,” I heard the quiet  _ thud _ of the phone being set, just a little roughly, on the counter and I closed my eyes, waiting for him to say something, “but I knew as soon as she walked in that she was far from fine. I didn't know it was possible to be so pale and so flushed at the same time; I don't want to think about what her temperature must have been. Did she tell you about the awkward moment with Rebecca?” I flinched, my teeth grinding, as I remembered the afternoon, just two days earlier, at the theatre with my mother-in-law and one of the volunteers, a student from Boston College who spent 10-15 hours a week helping out at CYT.

Chris’s hand closed around my arm and he pulled - gently, just enough force to let me know that he wanted me to turn and look at him. “She did not tell me about that.” He nearly glared down at me, the phone still on the counter and one hand on his hip, the other still wrapped, albeit more loosely, around my arm just above my elbow. I just blinked back at him blankly. Part of me knew that I should feel bad about lying to him, but another part insisted that I wasn’t doing anything wrong, since I’d only kept my own illness from him in order to tend to him. It was a terrible argument, really, since I knew he’d just say that the last thing he wanted was for me to do exactly what I was doing.

Lisa’s voice came through the phone’s speaker again and I almost jumped, my eyes darting over to it. “Oh, your poor wife, I felt even worse. The three of us were going through a crate of costume accessories and she had to jump up to run to the bathroom. Turns out that was the second time she'd thrown up already that day and Rebecca went all wide-eyed and asked if she might be pregnant.” I watched all the heat drain from Chris’s gaze and his hand slid down my arm until his fingers tucked into my palm and his thumb rubbed circles over the back of my hand. “Rebecca didn’t know any better, of course, but it broke my heart a little bit, thinking of how it must make your girl feel every time people say things like that. She handled it beautifully though. She just made a joke about how long you'd been gone and immaculate conception and that was the end of it.” He pulled me forward, bending to kiss my forehead once I was close enough, but the comfort provided by the gesture only lasted so long, because when he pulled away he was glaring at me again, quite possibly even more disappointed than before. The medicine I’d taken earlier to keep the fever down must have been wearing off. I didn’t say anything and Lisa’s voice went on like a soundtrack to our unspoken communication. “And right after that I finally managed to force her to go home. I don't know what she did, but it must have worked, if she went from that two days ago to taking care of you so well today.”

“Yeah, definitely seems miraculous, doesn't it?” He lifted one eyebrow as he looked down at me, shaking his head a little. “Look Ma, I wanted to call and let you know I made it home, but I think I need to get off here. I should probably get some rest, since I'm so sick and all.” His look became even more pointed, somehow, when he said that. 

“Of course, of course. Get some sleep, and make sure you show your sweet girl how much you appreciate her. Don't be an asshole because you're sick.”

“Don't worry, she'll know exactly how I feel. Love you, Ma.”

“Love you too, honey.”

He waited for a second, glancing over at his phone where it lay dark on the counter, then lifted both hands to pinch the corners of my glasses between his thumbs and forefingers and wiggle them on my nose. “You know, I know you don’t typically wear your glasses unless it’s the end of the day or you don’t feel well enough to bother with your contacts, but I think they’re cute.” His words were sweet, complimentary, but his tone was dry.

“Chris -”

“And,” one hand came down to curl around the side of my neck, a gentle gesture that was no doubt just another way to feel for my temperature, and the other hand dropped to rest on the counter beside his hip as he leaned his weight into that arm, “I thought I told you years ago you don’t need to put on more make-up than normal or do anything special just because I’m coming home. I mean, I would never tell you  _ not  _ to wear make-up, if that’s what you want to do for you, but this just seems a little unusual. Almost like you’re trying to hide something.” 

“Okay, you've made your point.” I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to return his glare, though I was pretty sure I couldn’t equal the heat and gravity in his gaze. 

He scoffed, then after a brief coughing fit that made me raise my eyebrows but that he only ignored, he asked, “Have I? Because you’re standing in here making me dinner, and apparently you’re just as sick as I am.”

I held my hands up in front of me in surrender. “I promise you I’ve washed my hands like, every two minutes, and I’m not coughing or anything now.”

“Christ baby,” he rolled his eyes then let his head fall until his chin hit his chest, “that’s not my point and you know it.” He looked back up, shaking his head and rubbing his thumb over the underside of my jaw. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“I mean, we can’t just sit here and starve.” My attitude in that moment wasn’t going to help anything, and I didn’t mean to be so snippy, but the words were out of my mouth before I thought to control how they sounded. Blame it half on over-sensitivity born out of anxiety, half on feeling like shit.

He tilted his head down to look at me from under raised eyebrows. “Have you heard of this wonderful invention called  _ delivery _ ?”

I huffed and reminded myself to dial back the defensiveness. Even dialed back, it was still there, somewhat. “I just wanted you to come home to a clean house and a home-cooked meal and,” I sighed, “this is the first time you’ve been sick since we’ve been together and I wanted to be here for you.” And before I could stop myself, I snapped out the next sentence. “Are you seriously trying to get mad at me for doing something kind for you?” 

Like most of the few fights we’d had, things were going downhill quickly because my anxiety made me insecure (something that had improved greatly in my time with him, but that had not fully dissipated), and my insecurity made me prickly, brash, even harsh. While it didn’t necessarily make me say things I didn’t mean, it made me say them in a way I wouldn’t otherwise, with no finesse or care to soften them. And while I knew as it was happening that I was being unreasonable, or unfair, or whatever the case may be, I couldn’t seem to  _ stop  _ myself. It was like there was some kernel of something that rose up in me, desperate to prove not only to me, but to him, that I didn’t deserve the good things that I had - that I didn’t deserve  _ him _ \- desperate to sabotage me, even as every other fiber of my being, every other cell in my body, fought to defeat that urge. And that fight sometimes resulted in overcompensating, like I’d probably done that day, trying so hard to take care of him even though I was in no state to do so.

And true to form, Chris didn’t back down from his side of the fight either. “You’re sick too!” His hand flew off my neck and up into the air before dropping to his hip.

I shrugged. “I’ll be okay.”

He took a deep breath, eyes closed, before curling both hands around my shoulders. His gentleness, even after the way I’d just spoken to him, was a little overwhelming and I dropped my head to stare at our feet. “Hey, look at me,” he waited for me to lift my head barely enough to do just that, “I’m not your mom, or your step-dad, or whoever else. I don’t expect you to cater to me at the expense of yourself.” He squeezed my shoulders in his hands and when he spoke again it sounded like he was modulating his tone, speaking through gritted teeth. “We don’t do that shit here.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.” It sounded unconvincing even to my own ears. 

He scoffed, coughing a bit on the tail end, again, and rolled his eyes. “That’s absolutely what you’re doing. You think that if you don’t take care of me I’m going to get mad at you.”

And suddenly I was on my heels again. “Don’t tell me what I think.”

“Hey!” The voice wasn’t loud, but it was sharp. And it wasn’t mine or Chris’s. We both spun so that we faced the living room rather than each other, and there, hands on hips, fierce mom-look in place, stood Lisa, just beside the end table at the end of the couch. “Stop it, both of you.”

“Ma, what the hell are you doing here?” Chris spluttered, more surprised than angry. I don’t know that he’s actually capable of being angry at her.  
She started crossing the room toward us, shaking her head the whole way. “I was on my way home from the store when you called, and you didn’t hang up your phone. You’ve been on speaker this whole time.”

Both of our eyes darted down to where his phone still rested, darkened screen facing up, on the counter where he’d set it when he came into the kitchen. He must have assumed she’d hung up when they finished talking, and I was too preoccupied to think much about it once he’d turned his attention to me. “Shit,” Chris groaned when he seemed to realize his mistake.

I dropped my eyes and tried to look sheepish. “Sorry Mom.”

“You two are ridiculous, you know that? You,” she stopped at the end of the island, one hand on the counter and the other pointing forcefully at her son, “back to your blanket fort. And you,” my eyes widened when she turned slightly to point at me, “back to wherever you’ve spent most of your time the past few days.” I couldn’t manage to do anything other than nod my compliance as she did a quick scan of the kitchen. “I’ll finish up the soup and bring you each a bowl and a few bottles of water then put away the leftovers and clean up in here. And neither of you is to get out of your blankets unless it’s to go to the bathroom, got it?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Yeah Ma.”

When neither of us moved immediately she made a shooing motion with her hands. “Go.” I started to move, but Chris didn’t, not right away. I looked over at him and he was giving her his best puppy dog eyes and spreading his arms wide. “No I am not hugging you. Go lay down.”

By the time she came upstairs to where I was tucked away in the master bedroom, I’d stripped out of my real clothes and tossed them in the chair in the corner of the room and pulled on one of Chris’s t-shirts and was in bed under the covers, even having pulled an extra blanket out of the linen closet. It was amazing how much energy had drained out of me once I was no longer channelling it all into trying to take care of someone else. Lisa set the tray with the soup, two glasses of water, and a couple painkillers on the nightstand next to me. “Thank you,” I managed quietly.

She rested her palm on my forehead and shook her head. “You’re supposed to be the sensible one, you know.”

“Sorry,” I whispered.

“Don’t be sorry,” she brushed my hair back, “just don’t pull this again. I know his presentation could’ve used some work, but he meant everything he said.  _ No one  _ expects you to sacrifice yourself for him.” I nodded, unable to look her in the eye. “And no one loves how much you love him, how much you want to take care of him and be there for him, more than I do, but this isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.”

“I know.”

“Well, just remember it next time, okay?” I nodded again. “Okay. I’ll be back with breakfast in the morning. In the meantime, I don’t want either of you leaving your sick rooms, got it? Just leave your dishes in here, use your en suite bathroom, and stay away from each other. I’m going to tell him the same thing about staying downstairs. You two don’t need to just keep passing germs back and forth, especially if you don’t have the same thing, and chances are you don’t, since he’s just coming home. Okay,” she looked around the room then turned her attention back to me. “Is there anything else you need from me before I head downstairs to clean up then go home?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Okay then. I’ll see you tomorrow. Behave.”

I ate about half the soup, all I could muster up the energy to force down, then fell asleep to the distant sounds of the television in the living room and dishes clinking in the kitchen. I woke up completely disoriented and unsure of how much time had passed, but while the waters and painkillers were still on my nightstand, the tray and half-empty bowl of soup were gone, so I knew that Lisa had been back at some point and I’d slept through it. I sat up, leaning back against the headboard, enough to swallow the painkillers, washing them down with one whole glass of water, my throat burning with each swallow. Moving slowly, partly because I was still a little achy, though much better than I’d been a few days earlier, but mostly because I was afraid I would get lightheaded if I stood up too quickly, I dragged myself out of the bed and to the bathroom to start running a bath, complete with salts for the body aches and a few drops of some of my favorite essential oils.

As the tub filled, I made my way downstairs to the wide entryway between the hall and the living room. Chris was still on the couch under a mountain of blankets, but he was sitting up, and as I looked at his profile I could see his eyelashes flutter as he blinked at the television. “Is she gone?” I asked timidly, leaning against the doorway and balancing my weight on one foot while the toes of the other traced a line across the hardwood.

He turned slowly in my direction, blinking heavily once and shooting me a small, almost embarrassed smile. “Yeah, she left about an hour ago. Did you fall asleep?”

I nodded. “Yeah, for a while.” Or what I assumed was a while, anyway, if his mom had been gone for an hour and she’d managed to come into the bedroom and clean up after me at some point before that.

“Good,” his smile grew a little, “sounds like you needed it.”

“Umm,” I fingered the hem of the t-shirt I wore between my thumbs and forefingers and looked down at my feet; I knew it was silly to feel so nervous with my own husband, but I couldn’t help it, between the mild embarrassment from our earlier spat and the slight possibility that he might still be upset with me, or the even slighter one that he might have taken his mom’s directive so seriously that he would scold me for being there rather than upstairs in bed, “I’m drawing a bath now, with spearmint oil, and eucalyptus.” I looked up at him then and saw him looking back at me with wide eyes, a combination of confusion and hopefulness settling over his features. “I thought that combined with the steam might help with my congestion. Do you want to join me?”

His eyes narrowed back to normal and his expression softened. “Yeah?” I nodded. “Yeah baby, that sounds good.” He started pushing the blankets off himself and made his way off the couch. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” I answered as he crossed the room. When he was only a few steps away, I pushed myself off the doorway and let my hands fall to my sides.

“Hey, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings before,” he told me when we stood toe-to-toe. His fingertips grazed over the outsides of my thighs until his hands slipped under my shirt to settle on my hips. “I didn’t mean to, at all.”

I managed a small smile. “I know.” My hands came up, hovering for just a second before landing on his chest. “But, I just wanted to be a good wife, take care of you.”

He slid his hands around my waist and onto the small of my back, pulling me closer as he did. When he had me almost pulled against him, only a couple inches between us, he locked his hands together and let them hang over my butt. My own hands slid up his chest to curl over his shoulders. He leaned down to kiss my forehead, frowning a little when he pulled away, maybe at my temperature, maybe at what he was about to say. 

“And I appreciate that, you know I do. I want to be a good husband for you, too, I strive for it every day. But you’re not a good wife because you  _ take care of me _ , you’re a good wife because you love me, and respect me, and because you’re my partner, which makes us equals, remember?” He flexed his arms and pulled me a little closer. “I  _ love  _ that you want to take care of me. I want to take care of you, too. But I don’t want you to think that I’m going to be mad at you or love you any less because you take care of  _ yourself  _ first. We’re no good to each other if we don’t.”

“I -”

One hand slipped across my lower back to curl around my hip and hold me close while the other came up to cradle my cheek, fingers combing into my hair without acknowledging the fact that it had become sweaty and probably a little tangled while I slept. “I know that’s hard for you, I know it’s not what you’re used to, but I’m trying to fix that.” The knot in my chest and the lump in my throat meant I couldn’t say anything to that, so I just nodded. “Alright,” he said with a nod, as if he’d just settled the whole ordeal and was turning the page, even closing the book, on everything that had happened up to that point. “So what are the chances our bathroom is flooded by now?”

I shrugged, shooting him a small grin that was bigger than any I’d managed so far. “We’ve got a big tub, it should be fine.”

He smiled back and even barely managed a quiet laugh with only a few coughs tacked onto the end “Well, let’s go make use of it. And then probably go right back to bed, because I still feel like shit and I think I could sleep for 48 hours straight right now.” He slid his hand from my cheek down the side of my body then used both hands on my hips to turn me back toward the stairs.

“And by bed you mean …” I trailed off, turning to look at him over my shoulder as he guided me to the bottom of the stairs, “bed?” I stepped onto the bottom step and stopped there, still looking at him. “Not couch?”

He pressed his forehead to my temple, his nose brushing just in front of my ear. “Definitely.” He kissed my cheek then pulled back and urged me up the stairs. “We’re both already sick, might as well be sick together.” I rested my hands over his and squeezed and he leaned in enough to place his lips right next to my ear and whisper, “Just don’t tell Ma.”


End file.
